Post-Dalek Sensory Distintgration
by infinite.regress17
Summary: After the events on Skaro Clara has PDSD and the Doctor has a Duty of Care. Together they have to reintegrate Clara's senses, but just piecing sensations together is not enough. There's something else between them that needs fixing too. Set after 'The Witches Familiar.' Expands on canon relationship, so for mature readers. Comments and feedback on style and content appreciated!
After the events on Skaro Clara has _PDSD_ and the Doctor has a Duty of Care. Together they have to reintegrate Clara's senses, but just piecing sensations together is not enough. There's something else between them that needs fixing too.

Set immediately after 'The Witches Familiar.'

 **Chapter 1: The World is Grey or on Fire**

'Yeah, I'm O.K, of course I'm O.K, I'm always O.K,' Clara told the Doctor with a deceptive hug, but as the TARDIS wheezed out of her sitting room it took the last bit of colour in the world with it.

She went into the kitchen, got a mug from the cupboard, filled the kettle, and sat to wait for it to boil. The boiling sounded far away, as if the volume on her life had been turned down and time drifted as she stared vacantly at the kettle. When she poured water it was already stone cold. That was odd. She pressed the switch again then went to the sitting room. She slumped on the sofa, turned the T.V. on to the news and an endless stream of disjointed images. She couldn't stand it for more than a minute. Flick. EastEnders: Ugh, she turned over before the first bar of the title music had finished. David Attenborough. He should be soothing. She let the colourless gazelles run across the screen and time drifted. How much time? The flat was cold and dark. She wandered to the kitchen. Hadn't eaten all day but there was no way she could face food, so she filled a glass with water and headed to the bathroom. She stuck her hand under the shower head. The water was cool even when she turned the temperature up high. Boiler on the blink? She got in anyway: soaped and scrubbed to scrape the Dalek off. Let the water wash Skaro away. She said out loud, 'No. More. Dalek,' and used a finger to make a staggered line on the steamed-up side of the shower cubicle as she spoke.

After the shower she stood dripping and naked in front of the mirror, red-skinned from the cool-hot-water and the scrubbing, two angry mosquito bites at her temples the only visible marks from the fusion with the Dalek. She touched them expecting pain. They were numb, which was odd. She must have put on pyjamas, dried her hair, brushed her teeth, but the only thing in her head as tumbled into sleep was the Dalek.

She spins and falls back into the belly of the beast. Her temples are punctured with electrodes that pulse, spike and crackle into her brain until she can only think in sounds; an overpowering symphony of hate and destruction conducted by a warbling psychopath with a pointy stick. Twisted noise builds waves of fear until terror takes hold and tightens a metal fist around her 's nothing but shrieking blackness and flashes of distorted faces, the smell of rot and devastation in her nose and the taste of metal and madness in her mouth; closed in and stifling, cut off and helpless, she can't move, she can't breathe, she can't stop.

'I am Clara Oswald,' she yelled over and over.

'I am a Dalek,' the machine shrieked.

She screamed and sat bolt upright with her hands clutched to her chest. Every sensation was ramped up past maximum: her skin was on fire and her nightdress soaked in sweat. Sounds were obscenely loud; the clock hammered, cars roared in the streets and her heart pounded. A vicious light glared at her from under the door. She flung her hands over her ears, curled under the sheets to protect her from the furious sensations. It was a dream, just a dream, but she was falling, falling into the Dalek.

'I am Clara Oswald!' she swore at the darkness. The darkness didn't care.

Next morning she pulled on a plain shirt and black trousers and twisted her hair into a tight bun. She stared at the mirror. Who was this woman? Dull eyes, grey skin, mouth frozen in tight-chinned stoicism; not Clara, not Dalek, but something else, created by metallic rape.

Breakfast cornflakes were autumn leaves sloshing around a murky pond. Her stomach churned and she poured the sludge away untouched. Coffee would do. She stumbled for the bus and watched unsuspecting shadow-people go about their lives, on their way to work and school, talking, laughing, oblivious. Part of her wanted to ask, 'Don't you know what's out there?' A wiser part thought it was better not to know. Lucky for them.

She sleepwalked through the day; staff meeting, tutor time, Jane Austin with year nine, verbs, adjectives and split infinitives all drifted past in a fog. Life was a black and white home movie with the sound turned down. 'I'm O.K. of course I'm O.K, why wouldn't I be? Lies slipped easily off her tongue because the truth was far stranger than any lie she could dream up. School even smelled wrong. Instead of _Impulse_ and lipstick, sports shoes and cheese and onion crisps there were wafts of iron.

That night she brushed her teeth until her gums bled, searched for comfort in mint but tasted metal, always metal. She collapsed into bed and stared at the ceiling. How were she supposed to feel? Upset? Scared? In need of a shoulder to cry on? She didn't feel anything, just heavy and numb. Sleep seemed as likely as Courtney Woods handing her homework in on time, so in lieu of counting sheep, and for the benefit of the assembled bedroom furnishings, Miss Oswald listed - in alphabetical order - adjectives for the current state of her world: bland, cold, colourless, disjointed, distant, distorted, drab, dull, flat, hard, hollow, muted, metal, metal, and metal. She was, she decided as she finally drifted off to sleep, not a living breathing woman anymore, but iron.

Missy croons, 'Destroy everything that's not Dalek. That's how it works dear, pay attention!' as she twirls her pointy stick. 'Dalek's channel hate. It's in their DNA, pet. They reload with "Exterminate."' Dancing and tricking her way through the sewers of Skaro Missy seals the door of a metal coffin and the world distorts.

Missy commands, 'Say "You are different from me."'

Clara-Dalek shrieks, 'EXTERMINATE,'

'Say "I love you!"'

'EXTERMINATE!'

Missy orchestrates an infernal standoff. 'This one! This one killed your pet! Shoot it!' She goads and pokes the Doctor, torments the one she has tricked and trapped. Love becomes hate, a friend inside an enemy, everything inverted.

 _One of us is going to die here. He's pointing that gun right at me. He'll wipe me out and never know I'm in here – though of course Missy will gloat and tell him – then he'll never forgive himself. And if my bloody weapon goes off and he dies not knowing how I feel…that will be worse than dying myself._

She jolted awake. The bed clothes were soaked in sweat and blood. She walked blearily into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. Her cheeks were torn from her temple to her jaw and her fingernails were caked with blood. She stared at her face and hands in the mirror. _Did I do that?_ She remembered ghostly electrodes welding her into the Dalek. She must have thought she could tear them out. She put her hand to her throat. She felt horse, like shrieking terror had tried to take her.

The doorbell rang in the distance. Her neighbour, Mr Hodges sent down by Mrs Hodges to check on her, stood at the door. He shifted from foot to foot. 'Well, you see, there was screaming. 'I said to the wife, "She's probably having a bad dream, that's all." "Or," I said, "Maybe it's another of those sound effects from her school drama club, you know like the wheezy one she plays on Wednesdays," that's probably what it was, eh?' He glanced at her cheeks then quickly looked away and pulled his cap further down over his eyes. He doesn't want to see anything. The wilfully blind make it easy to hide the truth.

'Yeah, just a bad dream, Mr Hodges. Thanks for coming down, but I'm O.K.' she whispered and closed the door. She pressed her forehead against the plastic panel. She didn't know what to do: the world was either grey or on fire. She took her phone from her pocket and stared at it for a long time before she dialled the only line of help she could think of.

'Doctor. I'm not O.K.'

 **Chapter 2: Doctor and Patient**

'You have PDSD.' The Doctor diagnosed.

'You mean PTSD.'

'No, I don't. I mean Post Dalek Sensory Disintegration.'

'That's a thing?'

'Of course it's a thing! Probably, but anyway, we can fix it.' He was babbling, but concern radiated off him, she'd give him that. He paced back and forward between the sofa and the TARDIS, shot a glance in her direction then paced some more. A couple of days ago that intense look would have been nice, but it barely registered now. He couldn't keep his eyes off those angry gashes down her cheeks, as if they were some sort of brand that was _his_ fault. He squinted and chewed his bottom lip, 'I should never have left you like this.' He didn't sound happy.

' _I_ was stupid, letting Missy trick me, then lying to you about being O.K.' _Really moronic and deserved everything that was dished out,_ Clara's inner critic piped up, only too happy to offer unsolicited advice.

'Clara, Missy is a trickster par excellence. She could a trick a black hole into spitting _out_ matter. She's tricked me often enough and I really should know better. Don't blame yourself.' The victim's not to blame; easy to say but hard to believe when the inner critic is screaming, _naïve, stupid and serves you right._

'What's wrong with me?' She asked knowing her eyes were watery and not able to do a thing about it. He crouched and took her hands, kept looking at her finger nails as if there was something wrong, then closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

'Listen to me, Clara, you've been through…a bad thing and need to recover.' He shifted uncomfortably, with that tight-lipped look on his face, the one he had lately when something went wrong with her. _Should stop putting you in harm's way but I can't do without you._ Cuts both ways though, neither of them can stop. He was talking again, 'The way Daleks process sensory information and invert emotions overwhelmed your perceptual system and caused this,' he waved his hand in front of her eyes, but she didn't blink, 'dissociative state. Most of your senses are repressed, but there are leaks.'

'Tidal waves,' she corrected. This was _much_ more than leaks.

He squeezed her hand then stood up rubbing his chin. 'We can sort this. The TARDIS has a sensory reintegration protocol and everything we need. We should start now.' He looked around the room. 'Do you want to bring anything?'

'Now I know you're worried. You've never asked me that before.'

They were on the TARDIS in a room she'd never seen before scattered with equipment she didn't recognise: things for checking, cleaning, treating. He filled a bowl with water and put it on the table then perched next to her. She was bleary eyed and passive, allowed him to pick up her hand and dunk it in the water.

'How does the water feel?' he asked.

'Cold.' He frowned as if she had got it wrong. 'Isn't it?'

'The water's actually warm. The sensory fracture's causing perceptual distortion.' He gently soaped her hand, then turned it over and scrubbed her fingernails. She frowned. What an odd thing for him to do. She looked down at their hands moving in the bowl. A flash of colour: blood red, ripping electrodes, blood under her fingernails, red in the water. Skaro, Missy, Dalek.

'Oh my god!' panic tightened her throat. She tried to snatch her hand away but he held onto it.

'It's O.K. Clara. You're safe here. Let me take care of this.' There was no fight in her. He can wash the blood away, let him deal with this. She sat passively while he scrubbed and cleaned, flushed the water, and patted her hands dry with a towel.

Next he picked up a tube from the table. 'Epi-repair gel,' he said with a tight smile, waggling it in front of her, 'This stuff's brilliant. Get rid of those scratches in no time.' She blinked. Sounded unlikely, but let him try. She didn't flinch as he cleaned the wounds. Everything was numb. He patiently ran the gel up and down her cheek, waiting for each layer of skin to repair, repeated the process until every mark was gone. 'Good as new,' he said, satisfied with his handiwork, and held a small mirror up. Her reflection was vague and unfamiliar.

'I'll take your word for it.'

'Like they were never even there,' he said, giving her shoulder a quick squeeze. Affront to her skin could not be tolerated. Would it be that easy to wipe away crawling terror and shrieking madness? He turned his attention to the angry circles on her temples where electrodes had fused her into the Dalek. Several applications of the gel and quite a bit of scanning did nothing. He sighed deeply. 'These don't want to budge. We'll try again later.' Not everything's as easy to fix as scratches.

They moved on to cataloguing symptoms - in nauseating detail - then he explained the treatment as if he was a proper doctor and she a vulnerable patient. Did he have a medical consent form tucked away for her to sign? 'The aim is to reintegrate your sensory-somatic pathways and reverse the Dalek fracture. We'll activate each level of perceptual awareness and re-route the sensory pathways back to your somatic system.' She aimed a glassy stare at him and he coughed, 'Put your senses and your body back in touch.' His fingers were flying over a keyboard among the scattered cleaning-checking-treating things littered about the room, and shot her a sideways look, 'How do you feel?' Fair question, hard to answer: jaded, powerless, disconnected? A million miles from home stuck inside a reeking tin can with only a warbling psychopath for company? He might as well have been speaking underwater, a concerned manta ray flapping and drifting through a grey ocean.

She settled on 'Lost, I feel lost'

'I'll find you, Clara, I'll always find you,' he promised. 'Are you ready?' He rubbed his hands together, ready to get the patient into treatment.

'O.K.' She wasn't sure he even was the Doctor. He was a shadowy outline, a cartoon figure with wiry grey hair and rough drawn features, the red lining of his coat as dark as the rest of him: a well-intentioned puppet prepared to tunnel through a mountain with a teaspoon.

'The TARDIS will help.'

'Never liked me.' Understatement: the _TARDIS_ hated her, played tricks and moved her bedroom. The TARDIS was never going to help.

'She's over that,' he said with a light wave, 'And anyway this is important,' he tapped the wall sharply three times to reinforce the point. 'The TARDIS will run the protocols through the sensory room and provide the environment we need for each stage.' He cleared his throat, 'Shall we start?'

'Let's get on with it.' How could anyone come back from feeling like this? Maybe he could see doubt and fear on her face because he was fussing, his eyes red-rimmed as if he was swallowing something painful back. He took hold of her hand, hesitated, and then threaded his fingers through hers. She didn't know if it was to reassure him or comfort her.

'You trust me don't you Clara?'

'Sure,' she said, not really sure of anything, but let him lead her down a corridor and into the sensory room.

 **Chapter 3:The Sensory Room; Earthrise**

For a sensory room it was a miserable failure. White: white walls, white floor, white everywhere, two white leather chairs in the centre of the room, nothing else but roundels on the walls. She'd teased him once about the round things; he'd huffed and wouldn't talk about it. Right now she didn't have spare energy to hold herself up, never mind tease, so she slumped into one of the chairs. He sat upright in the next chair drumming his fingers soundlessly on his thighs. She closed her eyes against the blinding whiteness.

'Clara, you need to open your eyes,' he prompted. She forced her eyes open. The whiteness was just a canvass. 'This phase will activate your visual cortex,' he pointed to where the wall had been. In its place was a star scape, 'Look.' A blurry swirl, 'That's the Antennae Galaxy collision. Stars are being formed there, or were, 300 million years ago from your perspective.' He watched her face, 'What do you see, Clara?'

'A white blur,' she said flatly. It was a meaningless indistinct shape floating in space.

'Look again. There are other colours there too,' he urged gently. If she squinted she could see a bit more.

'Blue?'

'Yes, the white and blue are new stars being formed. Anything else?'

'No…maybe…pink at the edges?'

'That's right, hydrogen. It will create new stars.' The image was replaced by an orb speared through by a beam of light. 'That's a quasar. Can you see the synchrotron radiation?'

'I see it.' Should feel something too but it was just white light in space, it didn't matter at all.

'When synchrotron radiation interacts with Hawking rad…' he trailed off as her eyes glazed over and she slumped back into the chair. 'Clara,' he cajoled, 'Look.' A different scene played out. 'Do you recognise this?'

A blue and white blur over a grey lunar landscape. Clara pulled herself upright, and leant a little into the image. What was that? Earth? It pricked a memory. Had she shown something like this to her year 8's? 'Famous photo, from Apollo something?' She said.

The Doctor nodded, 'Earthrise: the view from Apollo 8 Christmas1968. But that's not William Anders' picture, look closer.' When she concentrated she could see more. Earth was a blue and white marble, and there was movement too; It was Earth rising above the grey craters, a mirror of every moonrise she'd ever seen at home. There was sound too, and she strained to hear a crackly recording of an American voice piped through by the TARDIS:

"The vast loneliness is awe-inspiring and makes you realise just what you have back there on Earth."

'Who was that?' Clara asked her interest pricked now. This was a famous recording; she'd played it off You Tube when she showed the picture.

'Command Pilot Jim Lovell. I think he was talking about the value of connection,' the Doctor said looking away from the screen and at her, 'between people who care about each other.' Clara still stared at the blue marble, 'Or some other pudding-brain notion,' he added as if catching himself giving too much away. He looked back at the screen, 'What colours do you see?'

'Blue… and white...' Earth: her home, one of millions of planets in the universe and insignificant.

'Anything else?' He stood up and moved toward wall. Earth zoomed closer at a wave of his hand.

She could see the whole of North and South America, and when she focussed carefully she _could_ see more. 'I think browns and green too…maybe deserts and forests?' And cities and roads and houses, parents, children and pets. All of them blissfully unaware that the universe was choc-full of evil waiting blast them to bits. She wrinkled her brow, he was trying hard to help and she was being morbid. She forced herself to smile at him. 'Yes, I can see deserts and forests.'

He smiled encouragingly, 'That's good Clara.'

 **Chapter 4: More an Idea than a Song**

He was a shadow with flashes of red at the edges now. He walked across the room with his guitar, the white guitar body framed by his black jacket. White, black, grey, red: there was some colour back in the world. 'We need to re-synthesise your aural pathways, Clara, connecting a sound and a good memory will counteract the acoustic fragmentation.' She blinked rapidly at the memory of whirring and clanging and the taste of metal; encased in a Dalek-Clara-Dalek metal coffin. Sensations flooded her; the whiteness of the room glared and the silence closed in. 'Clara,' he was calling from far away, floating at the edge of her vision, 'Clara, how do you feel?'

'I don't know what I am,' she said with an angry edge. Fear spiked her chest and her hands shook.

'Clara, I know who you are,' he said urgently. She tried to anchor on his voice and held on to his hands as he put down the guitar and sat with her. 'You are Clara Oswald,' he said. 'You're a teacher. You're brave, and clever and funny...' He was watching her face as he spoke, and as she listened to his voice he came into focus, '…and you're really quite bossy. You don't let me get away with much.' She smiled him a tight smile. He picked up the guitar and plucked the tune he'd played for her in a crowd of medieval faces. 'Do you remember this?'

'Pretty Woman,' she said, 'Odd choice.' She'd been bemused at the time, flattered, quietly pleased, wondering why he'd chosen that particular tune. He'd hugged her within an inch of her life when she came down to the arena. But now it jarred: a sound she might fall into and never escape from. She winced, crunched herself up and shut her eyes. "Pretty Woman" twanged in the air then faded.

He stood with the guitar in his hands looking at the tight ball of woman screwed up in the chair as if he was not sure what to do next. 'Where are you, Clara?' he muttered under his breath. Then his fingers found a softer tune, a riff that rolled into a story, more an idea than a song. The tension slowly left her as he played and eventually opened her eyes. He seemed lost in the music, smiling softly, shutting his own eyes briefly then looking up at her. She was calmer.

'Does it have a name?' she asked after a while.

'I think it's called "Clara."'

 **Chapter 5: The** **Smell of a Time Lord**

Clara looked out of the window on the star field. Colours were clearer now and the cartoon figure was gone, thank god. 'What's that?' she asked, tracing her finger across the clear wall.

'The Large Magellanic Cloud. On a good night you can see it from Earth with the naked eye. He finished typing on a keyboard on the wall and looked up, 'Any change?'

She nodded slightly. 'Um, yeah. Things aren't so fuzzy all the time. It's shifts in and out of focus. You sound clearer,' she said. 'But I can still smell and taste metal all the time.' She wrinkled her nose and fought back a wave of nausea.

'That's a sensory illusion. Contact with the Dalek created an organic molecule, Octen-2, that's imprinted on your chemosensory system. Smell and taste are closely linked. In fact 75% of what you taste comes from your sense of smell.'

'No wonder I can't eat.' She almost gagged at the thought of it. Her pulse spiked as the smell and taste of Dalek flooded back.

He said 'Smell has a direct pathway to memories and mood. Olfactory sensory neurones are directly wired to the limbic areas of your brain. The Dalek caused a temporary parosmia.' He paused and then helpfully added, 'Smell distortion.'

He was using long words that didn't make a lot of sense, but his voice was what she really needed. She forced herself to focus on what was going on in the room to stop herself falling into the memory of Dalek. 'What are you going to do?'

'Same process as before. Tap into some pre-existing olfactory associations to negate the distortion.'

She gave him a mildly exasperated look. 'Happy smells?' The chairs had been replaced with a sofa and she waited with her hands on her lap while he punched another sequence of keys then sat down next to her.

'Can you smell anything?'

'No.'

'Now?'

'No. What's it supposed to be?'

'Salt air. Earth, ocean. Still nothing?' he asked with a perplexed frown.

'No.'

'Maybe that was too subtle. He nipped out of the room and returned with a loaf of bread. 'How about this?'

This was the TARDIS so best not to ask, she decided. She reached out and touched the loaf, but there was no fresh-baked aroma, just the tang of Dalek. Her throat tightened. 'I can't smell anything.' Her pulse quickened and heat flushed her face, 'What's going wrong?'

'It's O.K. Clara, just relax. Close your eyes.'

Concentrate; she closed her eyes and took slow deep breaths and focused on his voice. 'I think I can smell something. But not bread, it's apple…and...sandalwood…I think.'

The Doctor coughed uncomfortably. 'I think that might be my aftershave.' She opened an eye in his direction. He flustered, 'What, you think Time Lords don't shave?'

'Never really considered it,' she admitted. The image of him lathered up in front of a mirror with a razor in hand was an odd one. She never thought of him doing ordinary things. He ate, slept sometimes, he must shower and shave like any other man. That smell really was very nice though, very him.

'Well, O.K. in the interest of the protocol…we'll go with that. What do you observe?'

'Er…subtle but masculine?' she ventured, suspecting that was not what he meant.

He laughed and played along, 'Lively, magnetic with an unforgettable signature…' Then added modestly, 'Well that's what it says on the bottle. Monte Blanc "Legend." Present from Amy.' He moved a bit closer, probably in the interests of the protocol, 'Anything else?'

She breathed in deeply, 'er…geranium?' That was definitely not what he meant and she knew it.

'I meant is the metallic smell still there?'

She smiled and said, 'Nope. Pretty much just getting apple and sandalwood right now.'

 **Chapter 6: Taste:** **Weird is Beats Hollow or Terrified.**

'We've been at this a while. Do you want to take a break? Get some rest?'

That's not like him, bothering about pudding-brain needs like rest. He'll be noticing I'm a woman next. Wouldn't that be nice? 'I'd like a drink of water, but let's press on.' Soonest fixed, best mended. He disappeared from the room, and came back with a bar of gold and black wrapped posh dark chocolate, and a glass of water. He handed her the water and sank back into the sofa beside her. 'Chocolate?'

He grinned. 'Calories consumed on the TARDIS have no lasting effect.'

O.K, _that_ was more like him, but he wasn't going to catch her twice with that one. 'That's not even true!' she scoffed but couldn't help smiling. Things were lighter, clearer. On the screen she could see the star-scape again and this time the Eagle Nebula had three distinct columns of dark cloud surrounded by swirling green gases and pink stars. Maybe this was working.

He laughed and said 'You got me.' As he pealed back the wrapper. 'With good quality chocolate a little goes a long way, so don't worry. Not that you need to.' Did his eyes, just for the briefest second, flick up and down her body as he spoke? Or did she imagine it? 'Besides, this is more or less on prescription.'

'If you say something corny like "doctor's orders" I'm probably going to slap you.'

'I'll take that as a good sign,' he said with a slow smile. 'Look, we're layering sensations to reintegrate sensory states. Tell me if it gets too much'

'O.K.' The gentle song started again, this time a recording, he was next to her holding chocolate not his guitar. He was very close: the music and sandalwood made her wonder briefly if he was trying to create a romantic mood. Probably not, he was a walking contradiction. A man who demanded to be seen yet didn't see in return. Who made a fuss about not hugging then hugged as if his life depended on it. I want you but I don't _want_ you. 'This feels a bit weird,' she ventured. Although, her rational mind piped up, weird is better than hollow or terrified.

'What's weird? It's not weird. It's a scientifically validated medical protocol. Nothing weird about it all,' he spluttered, shifting in his seat and turning the chocolate bar over in his hand several times. He examined it needlessly closely then seemed to come to a decision. He quickly unwrapped the bar, offered her a piece, jumped up, and paced across the room.

'O.K.' She chewed and swallowed. Still metal. 'Hmm.' She had a long gulp of the water, but that didn't help either. She put the glass on the floor.

He shifted from foot to foot in front of her. 'I don't think you gave that enough time.' He handed her another piece. 'You need to let the flavours develop to re-calibrate your chemical senses.' She let the second piece of chocolate melt on her tongue. 'A good chocolate engages all your senses; it has blood pressure lowering anti-oxidants effects too.' He may be right about the senses but he's wrong about blood pressure, because what started off as pleasant melting of cocoa and vanilla quickly made her pulse race. The world distorted again: from dark silence on a subway line to a train bearing down full tilt, lights dazzling, engine roaring and blasting hot air.

'Doctor!' He crouched down and grasped her shaking hands.

'Clara, Clara,' he soothed, and she made an effort to calm herself and slow her breathing, but she was shaking. He sat down and pulled her into a sideways hug. 'It's O.K, No Daleks here. It's safe.'

She tried to put the chaos into words. 'One minute I feel better, the next it's all fuzziness and falling. It's hard to explain.'

'Like tuning a radio, moving between clear channels and static?' he asked.

She nodded. _That just what it's like except I'm a human being not a radio._ 'Is this supposed to happen?' she asked, voice rising despite her efforts to stay calm. A few hours ago she hardly cared, but now she just wanted it fixed and to feel normal again.

'There's no rule book for recovery from something like this. I think the sensory-somatic lability is part of the re-calibration process.'

'For god's sake Doctor!' she snapped these long words starting to get to her. 'This is my life not the bloody Royal Institution Christmas Lectures!' She picked up the chocolate wrapper and wrung it into a tight twist. How could he calmly sit there dishing out science lessons when her whole world was being whipped up into a tornado every few seconds?

He squeezed her shoulder, and had the good sense to look abashed as he said, 'You're adjusting, it's part of the process. You're doing O.K.'

 **Chapter 7: Don't Patronize me, Doctor.**

He'd disappeared again, and this time came back into the room and handed her a brown floppy-eared stuffed toy rabbit. 'You're not serious?' She said. _Please tell me you can see how absurd that is._

He spluttered, 'It's tactile. And appropriate. For the protocol.'

'No way. That is beyond weird.' Way past weird, into the ridiculous, and dangerously close to setting off fireworks the way she felt right now.

'Is it?' his voice climbed two octaves.

'You are not a kid's entertainer and I am definitely not a child!' _God, is that how he sees me?_ The mature response, of course, would be to put it sensibly out of sight. _Sod that_.

She threw the rabbit at him. He caught it awkwardly and jumped up, looked at it in his hands for a moment then let if fall to the sofa. 'O.K.' 'I'll get something else.' He went out of the door and she lobbed the rabbit at his disappearing back for good measure. It bounced off him and then lay dejectedly on the white floor. When he came back he gave it a hearty kick as he passed. He put a smooth rectangular device about the size of a computer keyboard on the sofa between them. 'Tactile panel,' he explained. The top morphed into different colours. 'Run your hand across the surface,' he suggested, 'there's several different textures.'

She passed her hand over the panel. 'All feels the same. Like metal,' she said tightly. The muscles in her arms twitched as if electrical signals spiked through her. It didn't feel good.

'Try again, slowly,' he said.

She drew her hand across the top again and looked up at him. 'It's not working.' Why was everything so difficult?

'Relax. Try with your fingertips.' He turned her hand over so her palm was upwards. 'You have 2500 nerve endings per square centimetre in your fingertips,' he said. With surprising lightness he turned her hand back over and guided her fingers across the panel's surface.

She focused on the sensations at her fingertips. First there was just the pleasant coolness of his hand over hers then, then as their hands swept back and forth; she could detect differences - rough to smooth - in the textures on the tactile panel. The whole effect was nice. 'I _can_ feel it,' she said, and he smiled. He seemed pleased that they were making progress. That smile reminded her of a lot of things: why she'd run off with him in the first place, why she ran away with him again after Christmas, why she keeps running away with him even though he puts her in danger and leaves her in random places far too often. She is probably going to keep running away with him forever, but figure him out, now that's another story. He was enigma. A grumbling Scot, sometimes sweetly naïve: "I've parked the TARDIS in your bedroom, Clara, because no one comes in here." Did he really think that, or did he do it on purpose so she'd never dare bring anyone back? She didn't notice at first but the motion stopped, and he was just holding her hand with that inscrutable look of his. He was so close it was hard to breathe, what with the smell of sandalwood and contradiction in her nose. It would take only an inch and he could be kissing her - or she could be kissing him. The impossibility of it pushed her into falling, one minute her senses resolved and things seemed clear, then they fractured; no glue to hold things together. That Dalek did more than fragment senses. It made her face something else; all of it was flooding back furiously now. 'I thought I was going kill you,' she said.

He gripped her hand with both of his and said earnestly: 'It wasn't you, Clara, it was the Dalek,'

'That's not the point!' There was a sickening buzz in her chest, an angry hornet trapped in a jam-jar that was going to rattle itself to death if she didn't let it out but likely to sting her to death if she did. 'I thought I was going to kill you without ever telling you how I feel!' she said.

He knotted his brow as if searching for the right thing to say. He'd probably prefer to be re-routing sensory-somatic pathways: he looked out of his depth now. 'I…I care very deeply about you too,' he said tentatively avoiding her eyes. Then he fell back on more familiar territory. 'I think the reintegration protocol is working, it's just going to take some ti…' he trailed off. He let go of her hand and straightened his shirt sleeves.

He truly was the most infuriating man she had ever met. 'I'm not a jigsaw puzzle! It's not just putting my senses back together! There's more to it than that!' Her throat was tight, she was close to exploding, and he was just sitting there with a bemused smile fiddling with his damn cuffs.

'Am I missing something really obvious here?'

That was the understatement of the millennium. 'You bloody idiot! I don't just mean I care about you deeply!' She'd imagined this conversation many times: in none of those sweet fantasies had she played the jabbering wreck. Take a breath Oswald, time for some radical honesty: time to be Clara. She spoke slowly, 'I mean, I am _in love_ with you.' Silence. He didn't move. Caught between passion and denial or a trapped between a rock and a hard place?

'Oh,' he said.

'Don't' you dare sit there and say "Oh." Whatever the hell is going on between us lately - don't deny it - is definitely part of the problem!'

He looked crestfallen. 'I'm sorry,' he said. O.K. not denying it was something, and he did look sorry. If she was going for radical honesty though, _she'd_ better be honest too; they'd been spinning each other round in circles. It really wasn't all his fault.

'I never said it was your mistake,' she said more kindly, but he still looked like a rabbit in the headlights. Hell. She fiddled with the tight bun still in her hair and swallowed back disappointment, 'Look, It's O.K. If you don't feel the same way…'

'It's not that I don't feel the same way,' he said.

She frowned. What the hell was _that_ supposed to mean? 'Is that Doctor-speak for you _do_ feel the same way?

'I just don't think we should initiate any changes in our relationship while you're in a vulnerable state,' he said, still fiddling with his cuffs.

Was he being deliberately obtuse and evasive? _I just told him I'm in love with him and he's talking riddles and spouting paternalistic BS!_ She said, 'That's sweet, Doctor, but please don't patronise me. You don't get to decide I'm too vulnerable. I'm a big girl and that's my call. You decide if you want to come to this party or not, but avoiding this,' she waved her hand backwards and forwards between them, 'It's definitely part of the problem. So we have to deal with it.'

He started to say, 'The treatment protocol…'

She cut him off. This wasn't about the protocol or treatment anymore. 'I don't need you to be a therapist! I just need you to see me. A woman! A not unattractive woman, right in front of you, who is very available and has just told you she's in love with you!' Couldn't make it any plainer or spell it out any more clearly than that. She looked him straight in the eyes: she was not going to budge first. His eyes flicked to her lips and back up to her eyes again. There! A part of him at least, wants to kiss me! That tiny eye-flick waived his right to veto, and she moved the tactile panel out of the way, leaned in and kissed him. He held still, not pulling away but not kissing back either. After a few moments she leaned back a little with her hand pressed flat to his chest. Damn it! She took a deep breath, 'Are you coming to this party or not?' He looked torn. He probably had good reasons for keeping his distance, but there were just as good ones to get closer. He let out a long breath, his shoulders slackened, and he smiled a small smile.

'Clara, I've been at this party for a long time,' he admitted, finally, owning up to the glaringly obvious. She put her hand to his face and at last he leant in and kissed her. Sensations rolled through her; his mouth on hers - the smell and taste of him, sandalwood and, yes, desire - his hands on her back, on her leg, tentative hands, wanting, but stalling, and she wanted more. Was he waiting for permission? Perhaps it's been a long time for him, maybe he's nervous or shy, needs me to take the lead. That's O.K. More than ready to do that. She flipped herself over to straddle his lap and enjoyed his gasp as she pressed herself on him. He held her hips and rocked her gently with a low growl. Then _she_ gasped; with one arm wrapped around her waist, the other underneath her he stood them both up and span around. The white sofa gone, in its place a bed – this _is_ the TARDIS – maybe the time machine doesn't hate me after all, are those satin sheets? Thank you dear, all is forgiven! She's falling in his arms into the generous bed.

He's not nervous or shy. A frantic stripping away of layers: jacket, shirts, trousers. A pause: 'Let me get this damn bun out of my hair!'

Wriggle, fumble: 'Clara, how does this work?'

'Last of the Time Lords defeated by a bra catch? Let me,' A small pile; shorts, panties, bra on the floor.

She could see him. Wound fingers through the thin wisps of hair on his chest, a pale imitation of the exuberant curls on his head. Those curls made him look softer, much more _him_ than the tight-wound expression he'd worn when he was new. She traced her fingers playfully across his eyebrows - wanted to do _that_ for a very long time - a deep kiss, a clash of tongues, chase away the tang of Dalek.

'How's your vision now?' he asked.

She thinks he is _enjoying_ her looking. 'Very clear.' She could see everything: Lean shoulders, arms much stronger than they looked; hands that could end civilisations and long fingers that could play the song of the universe, but were playing a restless tune over her now. He told her what he needed: not in words but in waves of desire that formed ideas and images in her head: _moan at my fingertips, Clara, while I get lost in your eyes, let me play a merry song over you._ She's swamped in sensations and almost screaming for him and could see blue eyes and prowling eyebrows, ready to pounce, ready to pin her to eternity, pin her to the mattress to finish what they've started.

'It's about time,' he murmured with a small sound of pleasure, or relief, hard to tell, and she didn't even care because time rolled away and she can hear 'Clara, Clara, Clara,' from him in waves and they are climbing, climbing until there's nothing else to do but sweat and twitch and shudder over the edge. Sandalwood and sweat, now that's a smell she can live with.

The Doctor lay on his side propped on one elbow, a hand idly running through her hair. Clara lay flat staring at the open celling. Looking at the Andromeda Galaxy, and the clusters and colours stretched far across the screen and out of sight. He touched the red mark on her temple and she flinched. 'Sorry.'

'No, that's O.K. I think it's _supposed_ hurt.' Things felt back in their right place. Pain where it should be painful, heart happily on her sleeve, enigma unravelled, tension resolved.

He squinted thoughtfully at her. 'Are you back, Clara Oswald? How do you feel?'

'Much better, actually,' she said. She'd never forget Skaro. No one can undo their history, not even a Time Lord should. Surviving the Dalek was part of what made her Clara Oswald. It was truly terrible, but she was still here, master of her own fate again, bloodied but unbowed. She looked him, grinning next to her, a survivor if she ever saw one. 'What do you think?'

'I think you feel amazing,' he said, all hands and trying to pin her with another kiss.

She wiggled away laughing. 'That's not what I meant!'

'O.K, Checklist; vision, hearing, olfaction and taste, and touch. How you doing on each?'

'Well, let's see, vision clear as a bell. Sounds at normal levels,' she breathed in deeply, 'smell...what was on the bottle? "Lively, magnetic and unforgettable?"' she laughed and traced lines across his chest. 'Keep splashing on the Mont Blanc, it's as horny as hell.' He grinned widely as she continued, 'Taste. Hmm, suppose we better check, kiss me again?' They were soon lost in the kiss. 'Well that's started something up,' she said. 'Hmm…really not sure about touch. Maybe we need to check that out again...'

'Yes boss,' he said and let her pin him to the mattress.

 **Chapter 8 Epilogue.**

Later…

'I _really_ hate Daleks. But, in a way, it's thanks to all that we finally…'

'Post-Traumatic Growth,' he interrupted.

'Is that really a thing?'

'Yes, it really is actually, although most people have only heard of its evil twin, Post-Traumatic Stress. We can learn more from challenges than we do from easy stuff.'

'I suppose we should thank Missy, then.'

'I wouldn't go that far.'


End file.
